Context North America: Canadian-US Literary Relations

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
the author of Calling Texas and Earth Prime.

This collection is based on papers given at a symposium at the
University of Ottawa. There are good essays here, but some of the
selections are too clearly papers tailored to time limits, and the
authors have not given themselves scope to explore this very interesting
question of literary relationships. Robert Thacker’s essay on Alice
Munro is a good example of this limitation; his essay is almost dwarfed
by its lengthy notes and its works cited, a lack of proportion found in
a number of the other papers.

A couple of essays stand out: E.D. Blodgett’s “Canada If Necessary
...” is one. Blodgett writes as a scholar of comparative literature,
and he has the theoretical and historical background to deal with the
problematic nature of Canadian literature. Laure Ricou’s article on
Pacific Northwest writing illuminates the complex border crossings and
negotiations in Pacific Rim culture.

The diversity of approaches taken by the contributors leaves the book
with no centre. Carole Gerson’s “Canadian Women Writers and American
Markets 1880-1940” is an interesting piece of research that hardly
seems related at all to Sylvia Sцderlind’s “Huckleberry Findley,”
a study of American influence on Timothy Findley’s fiction. No set of
essays could be the last word on this interesting subject, but this one
is not quite adequate even as a first word.